My first step in the professional world

Hello everyone,

First of all thank you for taking the time to read my post. My name is Karen Ithier and I am doing a Mass Communication degree at Charles Telfair Institute (Mauritius). Last semester, one of my modules (Public Relations Internship 393) consisted of doing an internship in this field. My first week at work has been really busy and rich in terms of experience and knowledge. The tasks and responsibilities given and the different perspectives undergone has already provided me with a strong and thrilling insight of how it is to work on the Public Relations domain.

The past week has opened my mind tremendously as putting my studies into practice has allowed me to become aware of various aspects of PR and communication, namely :

·         the importance of doing research on a daily basis thereby maintaining relevance

·         how essential it is to know about the background of the company/product

·         how helpful the research of PR strategies and tactics opens up to limitless possibilities

·         the extent to which your attitude and confidence plays a key role while pitching with clients

·         how brainstorming everyday with colleagues/supervisors facilitates the time management of each client

·         how crucial it is to make a market research (to compare, analyse and be conscious of the background and perception of the client/product)

I would also like to share with you one of my experiences of last week. My supervisor and I went to a meeting with all the team of company X to pitch on product Y! The brief had already previously been given to my supervisor at an earlier date. The meeting lasted two hours and their reactions seemed to be really positive. The time and energy spent on this project, in fact, made the pitch really exciting. At a certain point, I had been given the opportunity to speak on part of the pitch (this was a mixture of stress and excitement as talking in front of professionals may be a little bit intimidating whilst at the same time being given credit for your work is a very nice feeling!).

So let’s come back to the story. The meeting went really well as they kept nodding as a sign of approval and jotting notes to what we were proposing. After giving the concepts (the global ideas without giving all the details) we were expecting them to be giving their opinions and the budget allocation in order to give them a definitive cost estimate. To my greatest “despair”, they said that our ideas were really good but that they are already working with another agency which proposed more or less the same ideas but the agency selection was prescribed by the Distributor in South Africa. As‘compensation’, they proposed that we pitch for brand Z instead! I know that many of you will say “Well this is how it works” but to my opinion they should have either said something like :

i. “We are already considering other agencies, but let’s see what you have to propose” straight from the beginning

OR

ii. “You know we already have an agency with whom we are working with but we have this product to propose so let’s see where this can bring us.”

Let it be clear, I know that this is how it is. We spent hours/days working on projects and plans but only a few will go ahead, fair enough! What I do not agree with is waiting for two hours of long discussions to end up saying we already have an agency for this one so take that one instead! Simulating “thank you, we will be taking our decision and come back to you” would have been less frustrating than letting us speak for nothing. Well, the good point is that now they have a clearer idea of how we work and the concepts we adhere to plus we did not go for nothing as we were given another project to work on. I am probably overreacting but on the spot this made me feel exploited and fooled!

Of course, this is positive at the end of the day as this has been teaching me how important it is to pitch whilst at the same time keeping some mystery so as to avoid ideas being stolen. On the other hand, some other meetings with clients went really well as they gave the go ahead for our proposals which is an awesome feeling.

Summing up a week of work is a hard thing to do but I am definitely motivated to make the most out of it. The Public Relations in practice proved to be more exciting and positively challenging than what I thought. I will be giving you updates of my professional path very soon.

Until then enjoy and thank you for your time!